It started with me walking through the door one day, saying “Look, I need help”. The most important thing that anyone can do is to ask for help, and that’s where it starts.

I was only talking about it last night to a friend of mine. Soon as you ask for help, normally the floodgates open and you’re surprised how much help is out there. Some people just don’t know where to ask for help. I think people can feel guilty about asking for help. Ashamed about asking for help. Also, this is going to sound really strange, but people can feel comfortable in the pain that they’re living in. They’re afraid to change.

Recovery is very regimented. It has to be.

So my day used to start about 8 in the morning and we’d be driven to the treatment centre, normally there between 9 and 4 in the afternoon, so it was pretty full-on day. It got quite heated sometimes. I’m sure you can imagine. There’s a lot of emotions flying around. Especially early in recovery, a lot of people don’t know how to handle their emotions. And not only that, actually recognize them because they’ve been so locked in themselves, locked down, that when they’re exposed to their own emotions without any form of substances within them, it’s a shock. 

It was difficult, but conflict was really important during treatment because you have to learn to live with other people and resolve conflict. I did my treatment during the lockdown in Covid so movement was completely restricted. So if you can imagine being in a house full of recovering addicts, with nowhere to go, it was a real melting pot. I can laugh about it now, but my God, it was painful sometimes. But yeah, it’s hardcore.

You have to be prepared. Can’t mess about with it.

And really, if I buggered it up, I was back on the streets, you know. I mean, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. You don’t want to go back to the place where you were. 

For me, to be in recovery is a daily thing. I have to be vigilant about the way I think and to recognize when I’m slipping because it can happen really quickly. Part of my recovery process is that I do attend support meetings. I do a lot of Zoom work, which is one of the godsends of Covid, and I attend physical meetings as well, three or four times a week, and it’s a place where other addicts can talk about how they’re doing and that’s really important. Really important.

The real work starts when you’re out of rehab. They say rehab is like sticking a plaster over an arterial bleed, but you need to get it stitched. And that’s where the work starts.